A chronicle of our life in Brugge...
"Close to the region where the Champagne grapes grow, the land is also golden
with barley; France begins to sound Flemish, and blends into Belgium; the wine nations
yield to the beer lands.....the respect and the ceremony that other nations reserve for wine,
the Belgians also accord, with a special flourish, to beer." - Jackson

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

World War I trip around Ypres (Ieper)

A few weeks ago we went to a few places around Ypres relating to WWI. There are so many places to see that cannot be visited in one day.

First we went to the Hill 62 Canadian Memorial at Sanctuary Wood. It is a memorial that commemorates the actions of the Canadian Corps in defending the southern stretches of the Ypres Salient between April and August 1916.

We then headed to Ypres for some lunch and a look around the Menin Gate which is a war memorial commemorating the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient during WWI and whose graves are unknown. The location of the memorial marks the starting point for one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line.

It bears the names of around 54,389 officers.

Every evening at 8pm the road under the memorial is closed and the Last Post is sounded. This has been taking place since 2 July 1928 and was only interrupted by the German occupation during the Second World War.

We then went into the In Flanders Field Museum which is in the Cloth Hall in the centre of Ypres. It is named after the poem by John McCrae. The poem was written after Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae witnessed the death, and presided over the funeral, of a friend.

We then visited the Yorkshire Trench near the village of Boezinge (and is bizarrely in the middle of an industrial estate).

A Belgian group 'The Diggers' worked on this site for many years and recovered many materials and bodies. It was officially opened in 2003.

There are tunnels which lead to dugouts but these cannot be accessed due to flooding.